You, from the circumvolution, from the voiceless accent, from the uncolored word,

You, from the undulating and rootless seas,

From alliance you created the Alphabet . . .

And from the Gold Threshold of the Fourth century,

Until our day, dark with our blood,

Behold the multivious Armenian mind,

Is melded in Your ways . . .

O indissoluble enigma!

O cluster of lightening nerves!

Furnace of blood, pure bulk of dreams . . .

O wondrous and abiding seizure of senses!

Lyrical chimera-seeing frightful pupil of the eye,

You, rainbow drawn by God . . .

Bringing the fire of conciliation to us,

You, master of doubt and uncertainty,

You, unusual and sublimely traced dome . . .

You, monk of great emotion,

Man of God, brother of the mind, sister of the lyre,

Allow that I too may drink from your cup . . .

And today, nourished by your holiness

I, incapable lyricist,

And unpaid and unworthy grateful one,

I bring to you the mirror of the soul of your race . . .

I took into my eye the flame from his eyes . . .

And my words I have collected from his heart,

And whatever you read on my forehead,

Whatever you see in my smile,

With his Hope I am inscribed . . .

And allow today, O Mesrop,

That from Armenian soil stretching to the stars

I will ascend your golden staircase,

And sure-footed, from step to step

And from coronet to coronet and light to light,

Like a child of your thought,

I will come to you, singing this song of mine . . .

Commentary

Completed in 1912, the Mesrop cycle consists of four poems, differing in genre, form, and person, yet constituting a quartet of variations upon the theme of Saint Mesrop Matoc and his invention. These four poems form a narrative of the alphabet's creation, yet their temporal sequence is nonlinear. The quartet opens with an epideitic lyric, "Eulogistic," which takes place after the creation, and then moves to a "precreation" prayer poem, "Prayer to the Holy," spoken by Matoc himself, who invokes God. The third poem, "The Vision," imagines the event itself, taking place in the "now" moment of the overarching narrative. Finally, the cycle ends with a "postcreation" poem, "The Glory of Discovery," whose temporal location mirrors that of the first poem. These entrance and exit poems, occurring after the event of discovery or invention, frame the event and its preparation, providing Siamanto with the means to enter into Matoc's creative process and to link this process to his own literary aspirations.

The quartet is in essence a conversation between a trinity of figures who either speak or are invoked, consisting of Siamanto, Matoc, and God (God, of course, remaining silent and only ever invoked). Siamanto displays an agility for continually shifting the grammatical person of the poems. In doing so, he establishes a correlation between himself and Matoc, (even speaking in the first person as Matoc in the second poem) as well as between Matoc and God (in his descriptions of Matoc as a "God of the Mind" or "third God"), thereby breaking down the barriers not only of historical temporality, but subjective identity. This correlative impulse provides the basis for the last poem's final request that Matoc raise him up to his (Matoc's) literary stature, " [that] Like a child of your thought,/ I will come to you, singing this song of mine . . . " (penultimate and last line, "The Glory of Discovery"). In contrast, Siamanto's invocation of Matoc in the first poem concludes with the simple wish to have his remains burnt on Matoc's "plot of earth," instead of upon "a censer." The difference between Siamanto's first and last pleas to Matoc is the distance which the cycle traverses. The poems exist to transport Siamanto from his historically and existentially isolated human condition to a place from which he can speak to Matoc as "the mirror of the soul of your race" (final stanza, "The Glory of Discovery"), and from which he can also "rise from your golden staircase," joining Matoc on equal footing as a great figure of national and literary importance.